“A calm lake reflects the moon clearly.”*
When I read this sentence, extracted from a paragraph written by Bob Klein,* an image easily appears in my mind.
Did an image pop up in your mind? Savor it.
While I yearn to appreciate and understand poetry and metaphorical language, I often struggle. The next three sentences, taken from the same paragraph, tantalize, touch, and transfix me.
“You can also see to the bottom of the lake. In this way it reveals the worlds around you and within you and connects them. When consciousness flows like water it is powerful because all is connected within it.”
I often rush through words like these, disappointed that meaning isn’t instantly apparent to me.
Tim Parks,** in his memoir Teach Us To Sit Still, writes there is no guidebook to explain meaning. He discovers one way to find meaning is to create a special type of silence; silence Parks calls an “eye-closed” silence. The type of silence where “mind meets flesh.”
Both meditation (eye-closed silence) and contemplation teach us to open into the silence for solutions rather than shut down or rehash ad nauseam our old dysfunctional patterns.
Meditation and contemplation teach us to explore and not solve.
Meditation and contemplation teach us that continuing to rely on our intellect or on dictionaries to define these words won’t lead us to the meaning we crave.
No matter how hard we try, we can’t force the open receptive space to appear. Relaxation and understanding happen when we allow them to happen.
It shocked Parks that without mental discipline he was unable to relax enough to ease his bodily pain. Almost more shocking to him, as an author, was that the type of mental discipline he needed had virtually nothing to do with words.
Next week, we will continue to ponder other ways of knowing. What other ways, besides your intellect, do you have of knowing? Please go to the blog www.NickyMendenhall.blogspot.com and leave a comment.
As always, thanks for exploring the mystery. Nicky Mendenhall
*You can learn more about Bob Klein by visiting his website: www.movementsofmagic.com.
**Used with written permission from Tim Parks who resides in Italy. Teach Us How To Sit Still, a book Tim says he never thought he would write – is a book about his body. “How indiscreet,” he remarks in the forward. The New York Times Book Review says, “Parks is an aware, droll and intelligent guide to both his woe and to his salvation from it….vulnerable, winning, oddball and maniacal.”
3 comments
Regarding other ways of knowing: When I was interviewing for a job that was likely to be mine, I felt an uneasiness in my stomach and knew I should not take it. The company went into bankruptcy and closed it doors within the year.
As you know, I have great troubles with poetry, which is sort of oxymoronical to my love of words and writing. I fear it may be a too literal, not creative, aspect of my being, and I find that very sad. I would love to be Byronically romantic, sonnetally-empowered, but I seem to be a Dragnet "just the facts, ma'am" gal. How do I overcome that? Was I always this way? Is it my cold German heritage, or was it the legal-studies brainwashing that did it to me? As a child, I loved (and still do love) Winnie the Pooh; does the Rum-ti-di-um-tum poem count as my camel's nose under the poetry tent?
As I sat with the last two pieces that you wrote Nicky, I was in a perfect place to do so. We had gone to Reno, NV to visit our son who is still in the grieving the loss of his wife six months ago. While there we went to Lake Tahoe where her ashes were scattered at the entrance of a campground that was designed by Terri (his wife) as she worked for the US Forest Service. So we sat there looking at the basket which contained her ashes and of course engaged in remembrances of her. Then just a very few miles away was the lake itself which she loved. This deep (1650 feet deep), clear, clean beautiful lake which invited contemplation and quietness.
The depth and clarity of the lake helped me go to my depths and be present. It felt like there was a "meeting of depths" and I am not even sure of what I mean by that but it spoke/speaks to me.
Thank you.
Larry
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